March is Women’s History Month, and in recognition of the many hardships women face in the workforce, Alison Steichen, 2016 recipient of the Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes Scholarship and a longshore woman herself, began interviewing and documenting stories for a project titled Women on the Waterfront Oral History Project in collaboration with the Labor Archives of Washington. This inaugural article was published in the March 2025 issue of the ILWU’s Newsletter, the Dispatcher.
In 1980, the Seattle waterfront was forever changed with the registration of twelve women into Local 19. They were the first ever recorded women to work in longshore in the 100-year history of the industry in Seattle, which to that point had been exclusively male. As a longshore woman myself, I wish to pay respects and to hear the stories of the women who endured the most and paved the way for future generations to follow in their boot/footsteps.
For that reason, I started the Women on the Waterfront Oral History Project to hear the stories of the first women on the waterfront and to document and record their history- which is all of our history. Among those first women was Kevin Castle. Though slight in stature, Castle was a mighty force who went on to become the first woman crane operator in the Port of Seattle. In a gritty world, she faced discrimination and harassment with grace, poise, and determination.